Category: Illustration

When I realised that Nancy Goldstein’s book ‘Jackie Ormes: The First African American Woman Cartoonist’ was in Eurospan’s catalogue, a request brought the book to my doorstep. This is a good reminder that if you’re after first hand books from any of the University presses and live in the UK, make Eurospan your first port […]

Please note, there are mild spoilers below for ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’, you have been warned! As the dust (salt?) settles on the latest ‘Star Wars’ release ‘The Last Jedi’, this is a great time to pick up Abrams’ latest concept art and design collection focusing on Rian Johnson’s masterpiece. ‘The Art Of Star […]

In my Internet scans around certain subjects looking for things of interest, I came across ‘The Magic Of Drawing’ by Cliff Wright at a tenth of its original retail price. Added it to my pile and only now got around to look at it after my original scan and liking the art. It’s only when […]

Few fantasy novelists are as easily associated with their cover art as Terry Pratchett, through the 1980s and 90s with Josh Kirby and, thereafter, with Paul Kidby. Of course, they both had completely different styles and, inevitably, the younger artist went back to Pratchett’s earlier works and created his own illustrations for them. So what […]

One thing I rarely ever have is creative block. I might not have time to do everything I want to in a given time but I was curious to see what Danielle Krysa had to say on the subject in this book called ‘Creative Block’. In her introduction, she explains that she interviewed 50 trained […]

When I can fit them in, I try to fit in some art technique books. As I’m focusing on improving how I draw clothes, it’s inevitable I will look at artbooks that focus on fashion and picked this one up in the summer, flicked the pages and was immensely impressed with Anna Kiper’s art technique […]

I did have to wonder about the title of the fifth book in the ‘Learning To See’ books, ‘The Kitchen Art Studio’ as to what it was about. It’s not exactly about cooking but seeing the odd shapes of vegetables and other things in your kitchen as artistic shapes. Although I can cook, unlike Peter […]

‘Unlearning To Draw’ is probably the most advanced of these ‘Learning To See’ books but does have a fatal flaw for people like me. Peter Jenny thinks everyone has family photo albums that you can draw (sic) upon to use as your models. If you haven’t, can I suggest an alternative and you start collecting […]

The title, ‘Drawing Techniques’ is a bit of a misnomer because Peter Jenny’s second book in his ‘Learning To See’ is out to liberate your ability to scribble and doddle. That is until you reach chapter 12 and you start building the basic shapes of square, cube, triangle, pyramid, circle and sphere, the basis for […]

This edition of ‘Neverwhere’ is a republishing of Gaiman’s 2015 ‘Neverwhere Authors Prefered Text’ edition with a minor difference. All right, it’s a huge difference. This one has been illustrated by UK Children’s Laureate Chris Riddell, but the text remains the same as the 2015 published edition. Before discussing the illustrations, let’s consider ‘Neverwhere’. The […]